Is solar salt a pure molten nitrate?

In this section we will review the thermophysical and thermochemical properties of these mixtures and of the pure molten nitrates in order to compare it. The Solar Salt is a mixture of NaNO3 /KNO 3 containing 60% by weight of sodium nitrate.

Does solar salt stabilize nitrite?

Table 1. Thermophysical properties of considered molten salt as HTF and/or TES in CSP. NA, not available. Bonk et al. , recently, revealed that Solar Salt has stabilized nitrite content of 5 mol% during the described time at 560 °C under open atmosphere.

Which nitrate is used for thermal energy storage in CSP?

For those reasons, many works in the literature about thermal energy storage in CSP have focused on the KNO 3 –NaNO 3 nitrate mixture (42–58 mol%), known as solar salt, whose commercial availability is widespread, is often used as storage media in the present-day, and is occasionally employed as HTF.

What is nitrate molten salt used for?

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Nitrate molten salts are extensively used for sensible heat storage in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants and thermal energy storage (TES) systems.

Which nitrate is best for molten salt energy storage?

Based on the comparison of salt characteristics presented in Table 1.3, the 60%/40% sodium/potassium nitrates present, for now the most interesting option for molten salt energy storage. However other options will be considered, such as, the addition of Nano silica to the salt mix in order to improve its specific heat capacity by 30% or more.

How much nitrate does a CSP plant use?

This even larger thermal stability range fits the requirements of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants which, as a consequence, use nitrate molten mixtures as a heat storage medium. By 2030, it is estimated a usage of ≈1.8 × 10 9 tons of nitrate mixtures in CSP plants 1.